Insights
Legal notes in plain words — property, inheritance, residency and daily life in the Canary Islands, explained for international readers.
Search the blog…
Featured
Living in a tourist complex in the south of Tenerife: the single-operator rule, what an owner can and cannot do, and the window to 2028
A unit in a tourist complex is an accommodation unit, not a home: the Canary tourism Act binds every unit to one operator, the renovation Act forbids turning it into a dwelling, and fines run to 300,000 euros. What the courts decided in Arona and Gran Canaria, the question now before the Supreme Court, the decree-law that lets owners ask for a change of use until March 2028, the bill the Parliament rejected on 14 October 2026, the decree the Government announced, and ten papers to read first.
Read the post
Communities of owners in Spain: your rights as a foreign owner — the meeting, the majorities, the derramas and the debtor rules
A convocatoria in Spanish, a derrama for the lift and your name on the debtors' list: most foreign owners meet Spanish community law the first time the building asks for something. Who decides what and with which majorities, how you are notified and how you vote by proxy from abroad, why online meetings are still not in the law, what you pay and what happens when you do not, the five-year limit the Supreme Court confirmed, and the three-month clock to challenge a resolution.
Your first employee in Spain: the 2026 employer duties, step by step — and where the time registry stands
The company is set up and the first hire is real. Before the first working day the employer must exist for Social Security, the worker must be registered before they start and the contract filed within ten days; then come the €1,221 minimum wage of 2026, the daily time registry an inspector can ask for, the prevention plan and, for a non-EU hire, the work authorisation the employer applies for. The duties in order, and where the digital time registry really stands.
The non-lucrative visa in 2026: the real income figures, the paperwork and the mistakes that sink files
Living in Tenerife or Fuerteventura without working: in 2026 the non-lucrative visa asks for €2,400 a month for the applicant and €600 for each family member, because the IPREM is still the 2023 figure. What the new immigration regulation demands, how the consulate and the immigration office split the file, the 1+2+2 renewal path with its 183-day rule, and the mistakes that sink applications.
The Spanish will of a foreign resident: the choice of law and the European Certificate of Succession
A resident of Tenerife or Fuerteventura dies under Spanish succession law unless a will chooses the law of their nationality — one sentence that decides whether the children take two thirds or the spouse takes everything. How the choice works, the renvoi trap for owners who live abroad, what a Spanish will must say to coexist with the one at home, and the European Certificate of Succession that lets an heir named in Adeje open an account in Munich.
Moving abroad with your children after separation: what you cannot do
Every spring a separated parent in Tenerife or Fuerteventura asks whether custody lets them take the children home. It does not: since 2021 the Civil Code gives the decision on a child's residence to both parents. What a court weighs before authorising a move, the three doors that open when a parent leaves without consent — the Hague return, the crime of child abduction and a change of custody — and the smaller rules for holidays, passports and the police travel form.
The Canary cap on non-resident buyers: where it really stands
More than a third of Canary home sales went to foreigners in 2025, and the islands want the power to limit purchases by non-residents. Where the request stands after Brussels' answer, why a residents-only rule needs a treaty, what the Court of Justice allows, and the fifty-year-old defence rule that already sends non-EU buyers of rural land to the Ministry of Defence.